We Didn’t Start the Fire: Trump White House and Congressional Republicans Torch International Family Planning — Literally and Figuratively

We Didn’t Start the Fire: Trump White House and Congressional Republicans Torch International Family Planning — Literally and Figuratively

In a sweeping July offensive, the Trump administration and congressional Republicans launched a coordinated attack on global reproductive health—rescinding as much as half a billion dollars in funding from fiscal year 2025 (FY 2025) and ordering the destruction of nearly $10 million in U.S.-purchased contraceptives stuck in overseas warehouses. Adding fuel to the fire, House Republican appropriators advanced a fiscal year 2026 (FY 2026) spending bill packed with extreme anti-reproductive rights policy riders, including a harsher Global Gag Rule (GGR) and a ban on U.S. support for the UN Population Fund (UNFPA), while simultaneously including funding for family planning and reproductive health (FP/RH) at an almost laughably inadequate level and allowing the incineration of the blocked birth control supplies.

Approval of White House Rescission Package Torches Current Year FP/RH Funding

In a sharp escalation of partisan attacks on the appropriations process, congressional Republicans pushed through a controversial rescissions package (H.R. 4) that slashed $9.4 billion previously appropriated in FY 2025 for foreign assistance and public broadcasting—and which explicitly targeted international FP/RH programs.

In order to round up enough Republican votes to ensure the required simple majority, Republican Senators, led by Senator Eric Schmitt (R-MO), negotiated with White House operatives and drafted a substitute amendment to the House-passed package that deleted the $400 million cut to HIV/AIDS programs and left in place a $500 million global health rescission—carving out protections for most other global health sectors but specifically excluding FP/RH. That exclusion confirms the earlier revelation by Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Russell Vought that the entirety of the global health rescission was targeted solely at torching the FP/RH budget line-item.

Senator Jacky Rosen (D-NV) led an unsuccessful effort to remove the global health cuts, warning of devastating consequences, joined by Senators Cory Booker (D-NJ), Adam Schiff (D-CA), and Chris Coons (D-DE) in co-sponsoring. Speaking in opposition to the Rosen amendment, Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) falsely claimed that retaining the provision was necessary to “[protect] taxpayer dollars from funding foreign abortion programs through the global health program.” For the uninitiated, which apparently includes Sen. Blackburn, the use of U.S. foreign assistance funds for abortion-related activities has been restricted since 1973.

The Rosen amendment was rejected in a vote of 48 to 51, with Senators Susan Collins (R-ME) and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) joining all Democrats present in voting in favor of the amendment, and all other Republicans opposed. Senator Tina Smith (D-MN) was absent due to illness.

Combined with the rescissions package decimating the Economic Support Fund, which has furnished $51 million annually in recent years to support FP/RH activities in a small number of strategically important countries, it would not be unreasonable to assume that only about $24 million of FY 2025 funding may remain to be potentially obligated to FP/RH programs during the current fiscal year. (See chart below.)

The implications of passing a rescissions package are yet to be determined. Still, the continuation of the historically bipartisan appropriations process may be in serious jeopardy with OMB Director Vought vowing to send up additional rescissions packages soon and suggesting in interviews that the appropriations process should be “less bipartisan.”

Burn, Baby Burn: Status of State Department Decision to Incinerate Stalled Contraceptive Commodities

Last week, the State Department confirmed in response to press inquiries that the decision had been made to incinerate $9.7 million worth of U.S. government-purchased contraceptive commodities—such as condoms, IUDs, oral contraceptive pills, injectables, and implants—that have been sitting in a warehouse in Belgium since January, when a foreign aid freeze was instituted.

The decision to destroy these critical RH supplies, rather than transfer to experienced international organizations and recipient governments to distribute, comes at an additional cost of $167,000, on top of the value of the commodities themselves. Due to health and safety regulations, the supplies need to be shipped from Belgium to a specialized medical waste disposal facility in France. The hormone-based methods need to be incinerated twice. Officials in Belgium and France have both stated publicly that they are against the destruction of lifesaving health commodities occurring in their countries, and have engaged in diplomatic talks with the U.S. to find other solutions. UN agencies and international nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have offered to buy or ship the supplies to the intended destination countries, but the administration has rejected these proposals. Given the volume of supplies to be incinerated, a former senior USAID advisor estimated that it might take three to six months unless additional disposal facilities were contracted.

According to statements from the State Department provided to media outlets, no condoms or HIV prevention medications are slated for destruction. The administration’s message is loud and clear: condoms stay, birth control burns. Clearly, Trump administration decisions are not being guided by what is either in the best interest of advancing women’s health or wise stewardship of U.S. taxpayer dollars.

The State Department has confirmed its negotiations to cancel an additional $34.1 million in pending orders for contraceptive commodities, confirming earlier estimates that at least $40 million worth of contraceptives—purchased for use in now-terminated USAID FP/RH programs—are stuck in limbo somewhere in the global supply chain.

Some press reports indicate that the administration has cited the GGR and the Kemp-Kasten amendment as the reason for rejecting these offers. Still, these are merely pretexts for its refusal to transfer the commodities.

At the same time, the Trump administration has begun to ramp up its anti-contraception rhetoric to justify the decision to destroy the commodities by falsely describing them as “abortifacient birth control.” As reported by CNN, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists said there is “no such thing as an abortifacient contraceptive.”

U.S. lawmakers have joined the resistance by introducing the Saving Lives and Taxpayer Dollars Act in the Senate (S.2252), sponsored by Senators Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) and Brian Schatz (D-HI), and in the House (H.R. 4516) by Representatives Gregory Meeks (D-NY), Lois Frankel (D-FL), and Grace Meng (D-NY). The bill aims to prevent the destruction of foreign assistance commodities, including food and medical supplies, unless every effort is made to sell, donate, or transfer the commodities before their expiration. Despite this worthy initiative, a legislative solution is unlikely to be enacted into law, certainly not in time to spare the $9.7 million in contraceptives currently at risk of incineration.

House Republican Appropriators Approve FY 2026 Foreign Assistance Bill

The committee-approved bill (H.R. 4779), adopted on a straight party-line vote on July 23, is entirely predictable in duplicating the identical lines of attack directed at global sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) activities by Republicans in the House for the last two fiscal years in which the GOP has been in charge. The text of the bill and report produced by the GOP majority staff is nearly identical, the result of a straight cut-and-paste exercise.

Overall, the bill—which the House GOP are attempting to rebrand as the National Security, Department of State, and Related Programs appropriations bill—provides $46.2 billion for State Department operations and foreign assistance programs, $13.1 billion (22%) below the FY 2025 enacted level, according to a bill summary issued by the committee’s majority.

More relevant for those who care about reproductive health and rights, the Global Health Programs account in the bill, which encompasses the bulk of global health assistance, suffered a $512 million (5%) cut below the current FY 2025-enacted level but proposes an increase of $5.7 billion (151%) above the president’s paltry request. Most of the cut is attributable to reductions to the U.S. contribution to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria and to bilateral FP/RH programs, with all other sectors remaining flat or receiving a slight increase. Funding for global health security remains unspecified.

On policy, the GOP majority’s bill again injects the same litany of provisions as those included in last year’s bill, evidencing House Republicans’ ongoing fixation on fighting “culture wars” and expressing anti-“woke” grievances through the appropriations process, in this case, for export. Together with drastic funding cuts to bilateral and multilateral FP/RH programs, these more recent “poison pills” are on top of the perennial attacks by Republicans directed at contraception and abortion that have occurred in assembling foreign aid bills since the mid-1980s.

Funding for International FP/RH Slashed

House Republicans have once again proposed a drastic 24% cut to international FP/RH funding, slashing $146.5 million from the current level of $607.5 million—just months after that amount was enacted into law. While it is somewhat encouraging that FP/RH funding remains in the bill at all, it is hard to ignore the contradiction: mere days before this markup, these same appropriators voted to claw back half a billion dollars from FY 2025 FP/RH funds without acknowledging it during deliberations. The proposed cuts include a $114 million reduction to bilateral programs and a complete elimination of the U.S. contribution to UNFPA.

Global Gag Rule

The bill would legislatively codify the expanded version of the GGR in place during the first Trump administration, known as Protecting Life in Global Health Assistance (PLGHA), and reinstated in the Trump’s January 24 presidential memorandum prohibiting appropriated funds for global health assistance “to any foreign nongovernmental organization that promotes or performs abortion, except in cases of rape or incest or when the life of the mother would be endangered if the fetus were carried to term.” The provision would enshrine in statute what has previously only been an executive branch policy under Republican presidents. Because the eligibility condition applies to all global health assistance, funding to non-U.S. NGOs delivering services to improve maternal and child health and nutrition and combat HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria, and other infectious diseases would be implicated. This language is identical to that attached to the House version of the FY 2024 and FY 2025 bills that were later removed during negotiations with the Senate before final passage.

UNFPA

As was the case last year, the committee-approved bill contains a statutory prohibition on funding for UNFPA from any account. As a result, the funding prohibition applies not just to the voluntary contribution provided through the International Organizations and Programs (IO&P) account but to funding provided to UNFPA through other accounts. UNFPA is not alone, as the bill also prohibits all U.S. funding for the World Health Organization. The Republican majority’s bill demonstrates a strong animus toward multilateralism in general and guts U.S.-assessed and voluntary contributions to the UN and other international organizations. In the case of the UN, funding for the UN’s regular budget and voluntary contributions to UN agencies through the IO&P account are entirely eliminated.

For the third year in a row, House Republicans have included report language attacking UN agencies for recognizing abortion as part of comprehensive reproductive health care—again citing abortion as a justification for cutting financial support to multilateral organizations. As report language, these recycled, inflammatory claims carry no binding legal weight unless adopted in final spending legislation. Yet, they persist as a political tool to signal hostility toward addressing SRHR in international fora. Once again, Republicans are using the specter of abortion to justify hostility toward SRHR under the guise of fiscal restraint.

Longstanding Abortion-Related Restrictions

House Republicans have once again included longstanding statutory restrictions on abortion in their appropriations bill—such as the Helms amendment, Kemp-Kasten amendment, and the Siljander amendment—while also adding new report language calling for increased oversight in response to a so-called Helms violation under the Biden administration.

The “despicable” violation? A self-reported incident in Mozambique where four nurses— in one small province out of 2,751 nurses—performed 21 safe abortions in a country where abortion is legal. It should also be noted that one of those four nurses performed 16 of the 21 abortions, which are legal in Mozambique, further reinforcing the highly localized nature of this issue and the Republican willingness to overlook a 99.85% compliance rate. The nurses were funded through a Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)-administered HIV/AIDS program, and the CDC took immediate remedial action, including training and reimbursement for the $4,100 spent. The CDC alone spends $189 million in President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) funds in Mozambique.

To use this unintentional error as an excuse to dismantle PEPFAR, a program that has saved over 26 million lives in its 20-year existence, is beyond ridiculous. But congressional Republicans cannot seem to let go of this incident, as evidenced by the new House report language that directs the Secretary of State “to conduct stringent oversight to ensure full adherence to requirements in law” and “expects that guidance and training associated with such requirements will ensure full awareness and compliance by implementing partners.”

Given their sensitivity because of the Mozambique incident, reports from two countries indicate that CDC is already proactively conducting compliance training with its grantees.

“Culture War” Exports Including Anti-SRHR Policies

Again this year, the Republican majority inserts into the bill statutory provisions seeking to export America’s “culture wars” including bans on funding for counseling, promotion or providing surgery or hormone therapies for gender-affirming care and “drag queen workshops, performances or documentaries” and prohibitions on use of funding to implement diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility initiatives to increase diversity in the diplomatic and development workforce or to advance “critical race theory.”

Full Committee Markup Action

During the House full-committee markup of the bill on July 18, Democratic SRHR champions voiced strong opposition to the Republican majority’s draft subcommittee bill. Several Democrats devoted some of their opening statements to decrying the bill’s attack on women’s health and rights, including full committee Ranking Member Rosa DeLauro (D-CT), subcommittee Ranking Member Lois Frankel (D-FL), and Reps. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) and Grace Meng (D-NY).

Across the dais, full committee Chair Tom Cole (R-OK) and subcommittee Chair Mario Diaz-Balart (R-FL) reassured House Republicans that no accommodations would be given to SRHR programs and their supporters, with Chair Diaz-Balart saying, “Critically important, the bill maintains all longstanding pro-life provisions alongside enhanced oversight and transparency measures to ensure American taxpayer dollars do not fund abortions, a policy that Americans overwhelmingly support.”

Wasserman-Schultz Amendment

In a powerful but ultimately unsuccessful effort to defend global sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR), Rep. Wasserman Schultz offered an amendment to strip harmful anti-SRHR language from the House appropriations bill. Her amendment would have restored bilateral family planning funding to at least $575 million—the current enacted level—allowed a U.S. contribution to UNFPA with longstanding safeguards, and reversed the expanded GGR language.

Joining Rep. Wasserman Schultz in speaking in strong support of the amendment to remove the anti-SRHR section inserted by the Republican majority and to restore provisions in current law was subcommittee Ranking Member Frankel. Speaking in opposition were subcommittee Chair Diaz-Balart and Rep. Bob Aderholt (R-AL), as he does every year. After a thoughtful and measured defense was waged by its proponents, the Wasserman Schultz amendment was rejected on a straight party-line vote of 26 to 33, with all Democrats present supporting and all Republicans opposing. Four committee members did not vote—two Republicans, Reps. Tony Gonzalez (R-TX) and Guy Reschenthaler (R-PA), and two Democrats, Reps. Henry Cuellar (D-TX) and Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (D-WA).

Meng Amendment

A second amendment offered by Rep. Meng sought to prevent the “waste, fraud, and abuse” of foreign assistance commodities and to capitalize on media attention being paid to the Trump administration’s pending destruction of millions of dollars of contraceptive commodities and ready-to-use therapeutic food biscuits.

The Meng amendment prohibited the use of appropriated funds to pay for the destruction of medicines, vaccines and food procured by the U.S. government “unless every effort has been made to sell, donate, or otherwise make available” such commodities before their expiration date to a foreign government, multilateral or nongovernmental organization to maximum extent possible when necessary to spent spoilage or wastage.

In addition to Rep. Meng, Reps. Frankel, Chellie Pingree (D-ME), and Madeleine Dean (D-PA) spoke passionately about ensuring that lifesaving commodities reach individuals and help couples, families, and communities around the world. Ranking Member Diaz-Balart was the only speaker in opposition. It was apparent that he had read the text of the amendment and considered its provisions seriously, and had to make a process argument against it, recognizing he could not win a debate on the substance. Republicans should have recognized their political vulnerability and accepted the amendment.

The Meng amendment failed on a straight party-line vote of 28 to 31, with unanimous Democratic support and four Republicans not voting—Reps. Aderholt (R-AL), Mark Amodei (R-NV), Juan Ciscomani (R-AZ), and David Valadao (R-CA).

What’s Next

Congress is heading into a tense fall. The House is in recess until after Labor Day, and it is unclear whether the State-Foreign Operations bill will reach the floor. The Senate, moving more slowly, has delayed its markup of the same bill to September, which would push a full committee vote even further out. Meanwhile, rumors of another rescissions package—and ongoing concerns about OMB Director Vought’s legally dubious use of impoundments—are stirring bipartisan unease. With the September 30 fiscal year deadline looming and partisan tensions running high, a continuing resolution seems likely—but a government shutdown is very much on the table.

Stay tuned.